Strategic litigation

[1] Brown, a 1954 U.S. school desegregation decision, was carefully prepared by Thurgood Marshall and other NAACP lawyers so that the eventual Supreme Court ruling invalidated official racial discrimination throughout the U.S. government.

[1] Impact litigation has played a major role in the development of American desegregation, women's rights,[6] abortion, tobacco regulation policy[7] and gay marriage.

[8] Strategic impact litigation, among other things, has also been used in Nigeria to push for convictions of perpetrators of police brutality and to defeat legal attacks on the freedom of the press.

[3] In a few jurisdictions where attorneys are prohibited from bringing class action lawsuits, citizens have filed "grassroots impact litigation" cases and successfully represented their own claims.

The legitimacy argument holds that, in countries with a constitutional separation of powers, societal changes are to be enacted by democratically elected bodies and are outside the purview of individual judges.

These strategies include lobbying for regulations and legislation, speaking to the press, building coalitions, organizing grass-roots campaigns, educating clients, influencing government officials, and working with other interest groups.

[13] The American Civil Liberties Union and NAACP are pioneer organizations that recognized the political dimension of lawyering early on, which has led other law firms focused on impact litigation to follow in their footsteps and incorporate educational outreach, mobilization, and policy influence into their strategy.